When Portkeys Go Wrong
by FantasieKey
Summary: A portkey mistakenly transports Harry, Ron, Fred, George, and Ginny to the Avatar world. How will these characters change ATLA's plot? Read to find out!
1. The Portkey's Mistake

When Portkeys Go Wrong

Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor Avatar: the Last Airbender. Most of these words are mine, excluding a few quotes in the beginning of the fic that I used to show parallelism between what really happened and the fic.

The old, blackened kettle glowed blue, ready to transport Harry Potter and four of the Weasleys back to number twelve, Grimmauld place. As he stared at the portkey, Harry recounted the recent turn of events in his mind: he'd had a vision of a snake biting Ron's father, told Dumbledore immediately, and found out that what seemed like a dream had turned out to be true. Now he would be taken to Grimmauld place with the rest of the school-aged Weasleys to wait. His head spun slightly.

"You have all used a portkey before?" Dumbledore asked them. Nodding, Harry and his friends pressed their fingers to the glowing kettle. The portkey activated, and Harry plummeted into the confusing state of portkey travel. The floor disappeared, the room around him swirled, and everything dissolved into a rush of shapeless colors. He felt Fred's body—or was it George's?—continually crashing into his. Suddenly the rush stopped, the landscape stood still, and the outlines of his friends reemerged. Harry smiled with relief as his feet touched the ground. It felt good to have solid earth, covered with layers of snow, underneath him. Wait. Snow? Wasn't he supposed to be inside, in Grimmauld place? For the first time, Harry looked up. Snow stretched across the barren, icy land for miles. Water surrounded the sandless beach, and icebergs floated atop a frigid sea.

Harry noticed that the others all stared in one direction. They each wore a look of surprise, and slight awe. Presumably, Harry thought, the odd setting shocked them. Grimmauld place resided neither near a beach nor near icebergs. They had obviously landed in a foreign country. When he turned around, however, his mouth hung agape from a new shock.

While he had been facing a snowy coast, the Weasleys had been staring at a different view. A titanic metal ship had beached itself on a nearer shore. In front of it stood a teenager with a ponytail his nearly bald head, scar on his left eye, and a scowl on his impatient face. Near him a boy with a blue arrow on his bald head leaned slightly on a wooden staff. Behind this boy were what looked to be a small village of people that rather resembled the Native Americans Harry had once seen in a muggle schoolbook. A boy with a half-painted face around Harry's age was getting up from a fall in the snow.

All of these people gawked at Harry and his friends. Harry and his friends gawked back. Finally, the bald boy stepped forth.

"Hi, I'm Aang." The boy introduced himself. A smile sprawled across his face and a playful glint flitted in his gray eyes. His youthful voice gave Harry a friendly feeling.

"I'm—" Harry began to introduce himself back, but the scar-faced teenager cut him off before he could say anything else.

"I don't care who you are," impatience and venom colored his voice, "but the Avatar is mine." Having said his share, the teenage boy proceeded to shoot fire from his palm, straight at the boy named Aang. Harry's eyes widened at the feat. This boy could create fire! But how? He became even more awed and bewildered when Aang repelled the attack with a simple twirl of his staff. The fire boy blasted more flames at Aang. This time the bald boy jumped up with unusual height and grace to avoid the attack. He then created a ball of moving air and rode on it, away from the teenager's attacks. Harry marveled. He could see the Weasleys doing the same. With each blow of fire, a part of the wintry wonderland melted. The igloos that Harry assumed the village lived in grew lopsided and deformed from the heat of the attacks. Harry suddenly realized how cold he felt, but quickly forgot as the battle between Aang and the irritable teenager came to a halt. The boy stopped moving around and his swirling ball of air vanished.

"If I go with you, will you leave these people alone?" Aang demanded. The ponytailed teenager nodded his head. A man who, Harry assumed, worked for the teenager began to lead Aang away.

"No, Aang! Don't do this!" The voice belonged to a girl from the village that looked about Ginny's age. Her brown hair hung braided down her back, with two thin loops of it adorning the sides of her head. Her face expressed concern for the boy. Harry wondered briefly if she was his girlfriend.

"Don't worry, Katara, it'll be okay," Aang attempted a reassuring smile.

"Head a course for the Fire Nation. I'm going home," The teenager commanded his crew, as they began boarding the metal ship.

All at once, Harry's feelings of awe abandoned him, and he suddenly realized the gravity of the situation. This friendly boy, Aang, was giving himself up to the enemy in order to protect the little village. Who knew when, or even whether, he would escape? A better question, Harry thought, was why anyone would want to capture an innocent boy in the first place. It didn't really matter though, because no matter the reason, Aang was still being led away. He was still, potentially, in danger.

On an impulse, Harry raised his wand. Aang and the teenager were almost in the ship, but not quite. If he aimed carefully, he might make a difference. Wand pointed, he whispered two words.

"Petrificus totalus."

The spell reached its mark, and the scarred teenager grew rigid as a board and fell flat on his back in the snow. The villagers gasped at his trick and stared at him in, half fearing him, half fascinated by him. Frightened at Harry's power, the teenager's men hurriedly scooped up the rigid body and made a hasty exit on the dull gray ship. The girl that had spoken to Aang earlier rushed to his side, quickly undoing the bindings around his wrist that the teenager's men must have tied when Harry wasn't looking. After hugging the girl, the boy made his way over to Harry and his friends. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Harry spoke.

"Since I was so rudely cut off before," he said, "I'm Harry Potter."


	2. Problems and Distractions

When Portkeys Go Wrong: Chapter 2; Problems and Distractions

POV: 3rd limited, Harry

"So, you're a wizard…" Aang's friend, Sokka, mused, "And you took a 'portkey' to get here…." Harry watched as Sokka's facial expression changed several times in response to their question. After having introduced themselves ("Hi, I'm Harry." "I'm Aang!"), Harry had told Aang and his friends of their predicament. Namely, they needed to get back where people didn't shoot fire and make air balls. The eight now sat in a cozy igloo trying to solve the problem. Sokka's face contorted a few more times before he came to a conclusion. "I've got it! Just take the 'portkey' back!"

"Really!" Fred exclaimed.

"I _never_ thought of _that_ before!" George sarcastically added.

"Well do you have a better idea?" Sokka began to lose his temper, "Because in case you haven't noticed, this is your problem, not mine! If you don't want my help just say so."

"Well if it's useless, then we don't want your help." Ron said.

"Ron!" Ginny scolded, "Have tact!"

Harry decided it was time to intervene. "We do need your help Sokka, and your sister's too. And yours Aang. Aang?"

"Huh?" Aang had been absentmindedly using his air abilities to play with the snow. Harry made a mental note to ask these kids about their powers and their world.

"We need your help getting back to the wizarding world," Harry said, "and since you're from around here, you might know about something from this world that will help us get back to the old one, I mean our world."

"Oh right. What was wrong with Sokka's idea again?" the young boy asked.

"Yeah, what was wrong with my idea?"

"Well," Harry began, "The thing is that portkeys are one way. You put a spell on the object and it takes you to one place only."

"Then why can't you just put another spell on it and go back?" Katara wondered.

"None of us know how," Ginny explained, "We're all just students at Hogwarts."

"Well, we'd love to help you, but the thing is, Aang, Sokka, and I are heading to the North Pole," Katara explained.

"We'd take you with us, but Appa can't carry so many people," Aang put in.

"Eh, that doesn't matter," Fred said nonchalantly, to Harry's surprise.

"We can fly too," George finished.

"Er, we can?" Ron shared Harry's surprise.

"I thought that toad Umbridge confiscated your brooms," Ginny said, "And even if she hadn't, how would you know to bring them here? I didn't see you carrying brooms when you left."

"Umbridge does have our brooms," George told her.

"But that doesn't mean we couldn't nick some of the school's. George and I used the Christmas hype to our advantage; it was the perfect time to sneak into the broom shed and shrink a few to fit in our robe pockets," Fred grinned mischievously. The same grin spread across Ron's face.

"You're a bloody genius!" he exclaimed.

"That's great, but how many do you have? We need five to all go," Harry pointed out.

"Don't be such a downer, Harry," George scolded lightly, "besides, we have enough. Fred and I had a game of quidditch in mind during our—er—theft, so we took brooms for the two of us, you, Hermione (we were going to force her into a game when she came around), and Sirius. That makes five."

"So you're coming with us then, right?" Sokka interrupted the wizards' conversation.

"I guess," Harry said. "We don't really know what else to do…"

"Then you'd better help us pack some stuff," Katara told them, "It's a long way to the North Pole."

"Ok, what help do you need?" Harry asked.

"Wait a minute," Aang interrupted, still playing with the snow. "Did you say you could fly?"

"Yeah," Ginny spoke before Harry could answer, "on brooms."

A wide smile grew upon the bald boy's face.

-POV: 3rd omniscient

Sirius Black became more and more impatient by the second. It had been almost an hour since the portrait of his great-great-grandfather had told him that Harry and the others would be over to spend the holiday. His initial excitement had faded into impatience, and was now growing into worry. Shouldn't they have arrived by now? Sirius got up from his waiting chair and climbed the stairs to the room with the portrait of his great-great-grandfather, Phineas. Luckily Phineas happened to be in it.

"Tell Dumbledore that Harry and the Weasleys haven't arrived yet," Sirius instructed the painting.

"What's the magic word?" Phineas mocked in a sing-song voice.

"Now," Sirius growled. "This is urgent."

"Because urgency makes it okay to lack manners," Phineas huffed, leaving the frame. He reappeared in Dumbledore's office. The wizened wizard sat at his desk with a basin of silver material in it. He was pulling silver strands from his head with his wand, when Phineas spoke.

"Headmaster," portrait Phineas attempted respect, "My great-great-grandson has informed me that a certain 'Harry and the Weasleys' have not yet arrived."

The headmaster froze for a fraction of a second before turning to face the portrait.

"What?" Dumbledore's slight tone of surprise implied trouble. Nonetheless, Phineas dropped his show of respect and replied insolently.

"Deaf already? I said that—"

"I heard you," Dumbledore said quietly. "I merely intoned a disbelief in your statement. The portkey should have arrived about an hour ago."

"Well it obviously hasn't come, or else I wouldn't be here," the portrait said.

"Thank you, Phineas, but I don't think I'll need your services at the moment," Dumbledore dismissed. Phineas took the opportunity and left, apparently more interested in Grimmauld place than the office.

Dumbledore began to scrawl something on a piece of parchment. When he finished, the aged wizard turned to his faithful phoenix. "Fawkes," he instructed, "I want you to get Professor McGonagall and give her this note. Something about the portkey has gone wrong."

-POV: 3rd limited, Aang

"How can you fly on something like this?" Aang stared at the skinny broomsticks that two of the red-headed wizards had procured from their robes. I didn't make sense. Something so skinny would never catch enough air to be suspended for long. It would take way too much energy to airbend up an object so contrary to the laws of aerodynamics.

"Magic," one of the twins—Fred or George?—wiggled his eyebrows. Before he could say anything, the younger brother, Ron, spoke up.

"What do _you_ use for flying then?" he asked. Aang help up his staff. Seeing the unimpressed and mildly confused looks on the foreigners' faces, he whirled the staff open and launched himself in the air. Laughing at the wind in his face, he bended himself higher, curving steeply right and left. For fun, he loopty-looped a few times before landing to a small smattering of applause.

"Not bad," the girl, Ginny, smirked, "but Harry here's got pretty awesome flying skills too, right Harry?"

The boy with the black hair, Harry, gave her a look for volunteering him. "I guess."

"What? Afraid your tricks aren't as cool as mine?" Aang teased. He was in the mood for a challenge. After all, it had been a hundred years since he'd flown head to head with someone else. A little competition could be fun.

Evidently, Harry Potter did not back down from challenges. The boy began to grin slyly as he mounted his broomstick. Aang watched skeptically as Harry kicked off.

To Aang's surprise, the broom flew. He watched from the ground as Harry flew up, circled around, and barrel rolled. Though the movement wasn't entirely fluid, Aang had to admit that this boy was good in the air. Upon closer inspection, Aang noticed that the broom seemed to act a bit on its own. When the boy, Harry leaned right, the broom turned right seconds later. It seemed to respond to Harry's movement. The broom, Aang concluded, was doing all the work. It had, as one of the twins told him, _magic_ inside of it. The magic made it fly, no air involved.

Unable to resist, Aang opened his glider. In a heartbeat he was back soaring, triple looping as he went. He waved to Harry as he glided by and pushed the air faster. He barrel rolled, and snaked his way through the air. Looking down, he saw the redheads watching the show. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Katara, emerging from an igloo with supplies for the trip. He decided to land.

Seeing Aang's descent, the wizard boy plummeted steeply into a dive. Show off. Two could play at that game. Aang tilted the glider downward and bended the air as fast as he could. He and Harry sank like stones. By a second, Aang touched the ground first. He lightly landed as Harry followed with a smooth snow-crunching landing.

"Nice flying," Harry complimented Aang.

"You too," Aang returned the compliment, already distracted. Without another thought, he walked over to help Katara pack for the journey ahead. The time for distractions was over…for now.


	3. Up up and Away

When Portkeys Go Wrong: Chapter 3; Up, up, and Away

-POV: 3rd limited, Harry

Harry watched as the arrow-headed boy left to help his girlfriend. Or maybe his girl friend. He still couldn't tell if they were together. Maybe the relationship was a work in progress. The boy seemed more eager to help her than he would a normal friend, and the girl had reached out to him before when the scar-faced teen had tried to take him away; yet they didn't act exactly like a pair of lovebirds.

"Shouldn't we help them?" Ginny punctured his thoughts with the voice of reason. "We did tell them we'd help, and we kind of owe them for letting us come…"

"Oh, yeah, probably," Harry mustered, still staring at Aang and Katara. He kept wondering about their relationship. Then he wondered about a possible relationship between him and—

"Well I don't know about you lot, but I'm going over there to help…and see if they have food. I just realized I haven't eaten in a long time," Ron stated before walking over to help.

"The stomach is right," George said, as he and Fred followed. Harry cleared his head and trailed behind them. Just as the group made their way over to Aang and his friends, the older boy, Sokka, stumbled out of an igloo with two backpacks bulging with food and weapons.

"Can you guys load this on Appa?" he grunted.

"Appa?" Harry wondered aloud.

"My flying bison!" Aang cheerily told him. "Come on, I'll show you." He took one of Sokka's backpacks and gave the other to Harry. Beckoning forward, he led Harry and his friends behind a snow dune.

"Bloody…" Ron didn't even finish the phrase. In front of the group stood a gigantic, six-legged, furry creature. Although very reminiscent of a bison, the creature featured arrows, not unlike Aang's down its back and had a large flat tail. It grunted. Seeing the somewhat astonished looks on Harry and the Weasleys' faces, Aang reassured them.

"Don't worry, Appa doesn't bite. Just go up and pet him. Or sit on him."

Fred and George exchanged a look and stared at Harry expectantly.

"You can go first," Fred said.

"After all, you do have the bag." George added.

"I thought you two were Gryffindors." Ginny reprimanded. She walked up to Appa and began to pet him. "He's harmless. And adorable." Seeing Ginny safe, the rest of the group stepped up to greet the gentle giant. Harry handed the backpack to Aang, who put it on Appa's saddle.

"Looks like we're all packed," Katara told the group as she heaved one last bundle onto Appa. "Now we just have to get to the North Pole."

"Actually…" Aang started, "if you don't mind, I'd like to stop at a few places first. Is that alright with everyone?"

Harry and his friends shrugged. He didn't really care where they went, as long as they didn't stop thinking of ways to get home. Katara and Sokka, on the other hand, needed more information.

"Stop where?" Sokka inquired. "Because realistically, we can't just go flouncing anywhere. We have a mission to complete!"

Mission? Harry wondered what that could be. Actually, Harry was wondering about a lot of things in this world. Where exactly were they? Why were these people neither wizards, nor muggles? Who was Scarface and what did he want with a kid like Aang? He decided if he was to stay here, he should probably figure these things out.

"Wait a minute." The group turned to look at Harry. "What exactly is this mission?"

"Yeah," Ron agreed, "Is it dangerous?"

"Well…" Katara trailed off at Ron's question.

"Because if it's dangerous, ickle Ronnykins won't go," Fred joked.

"He doesn't want to risk his pretty little neck," George mocked.

"Shut up!" Ron's ears turned red as Fred, George, and Ginny laughed.

Through the jesting, Harry noticed Katara, Sokka, and Aang exchanging looks. He couldn't tell if the looks had been exchanged because of the jokes or the potential danger.

"Well, it is a bit perilous," Sokka said, "So if you want out, now's your only chance. We don't know whether foreigners like you can handle this stuff. It takes a good warrior to tough it out. I don't know if your fancy little 'magic' can stand up to the stuff we're up against."

"What Sokka means," his sister explained, "is that we wouldn't want to put you in a situation you wouldn't want to be in. There could be a lot of fighting involved, so you need to be prepared for the worst. We might get injured, or something…"

Harry thought he knew what "or something" meant. What could Aang and his friends possibly be doing that was so dangerous? As far as Harry could tell, Voldemort didn't exist here.

"We've handled danger before. Still, what exactly are you—we— doing?" he asked.

"We're going to the north pole so that Aang and I can learn waterbending. Then Aang will need to learn earth and firebending so he can defeat the firelord. He's the avatar, so he's the only one with a chance"

"Firelord? Waterbending?" Harry wondered.

"Avatar?" Ron inquired at the same time.

"There are four elements—water, earth, fire, and air," Aang explained, "and certain people can bend, or manipulated them. I happen to be an airbender." He created a mini tornado in his hand.

"But he's also the avatar," continued Sokka, "which means he can bend all four elements."

"Sounds neat," Ginny commented, "But who's the firelord?"

"Firelord Ozai," Sokka informed, "Is a cruel firebending 'Lord' who's trying to take over the world. He's already wiped out the entirety of the Air Nomads. Aang is the only one left."

"You don't know that for sure," Aang told Sokka, "the air temples can only be reached by sky bison. Besides, even if there was an attack, how do you know they haven't gone into hiding?"

Harry thought this 'firelord' sounded kind of like Voldemort. He didn't say anything about it though, because he didn't feel like explaining his whole story to Aang and his friends.

"So, can we take some detours?" Aang asked, bringing up his original point.

"I dunno Aang, maybe after—" Sokka was cut off.

"Sure Aang, where would you like to go?" Katara replied.

"Well," Aang said, pulling out a map, "First we need to stop here to ride the hopping llamas. Then we go all the way over here so we can surf on the backs of the elephant koi. And then, we need to go here to ride some hog monkeys. They don't like when people ride them, but that's what makes it fun!" He smiled hopefully at Sokka as he pointed out all the places on the map.

"Well, as long as it's not too distracting…" Sokka muttered. Aang cheered.

"C'mon you guys! We've got some hopping llamas to ride!" he airbended himself onto Appa and looked at everyone expectantly.

Harry mounted his broom as the Weasleys mounted theirs. Katara and Sokka climbed up onto Appa, who grunted softly. Harry watched as Aang excitedly took ahold of Appa's reins.

"You can do it, Appa," Aang whispered so quietly that Harry could barely hear. Then more loudly, he called, "Appa, yip yip!"

Five brooms and a flying bison rose in the air. They took off and flew forward, up, up, and away.


End file.
